YouMail Upgrades Automated Robocall-Blocking for Popular iPhone App

As the FCC Considers Proposal to Allow Carriers to Offer Robocall Blocking Services, YouMail Gives Callers a Free Option to Stop Telemarketers in their Tracks

IRVINE, Calif., June 18, 2015 – As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today mulls over whether or not to allow telecom carriers to offer robocall-blocking services to customers at its Open Commission Meeting in Washington, D.C., YouMail, the leading provider of intelligent, cloud-based telecommunication services for consumers and small businesses has upgraded its free iPhone app to show users how many robocall and spoofed-number calls it has blocked for them.

YouMail is an automated personal assistant for Apple and Android-based smartphones that helps users better manage incoming phone calls with a host of innovative features that improve caller care, privacy, and productivity. The service includes a proprietary technology called Smart Blocking™ that detects robocalls — including those generated by spoofing systems, and tricks them into thinking that the user’s number has been disconnected, so calls stop coming in. Users simply ignore calls, and YouMail does the hard job of deciding whether it’s a robocall or spam call and plays the caller an out of service message so that the robocaller won’t keep calling.

Roughly one in six phone numbers calling the average consumer is a robocall, and there are more than 80 million scam or fraudulent calls made each month alone,” said Alex Quilici, founder and CEO of YouMail, Inc. He added the robocall epidemic wastes an estimated 20 million hours a year and costs American business about a half billion dollars annually.

YouMail has blocked tens of millions of calls for our users and prevented far more robocalls from ever calling them in the first place. Our patent-pending Smart Blocking technology takes advantage of the millions of calls we see each day and the billions that we’ve answered over time to recognize problematic call patterns,” Quilici said. “All our users have to do is ignore phone numbers they don’t recognize and we do the rest.”

Robocalls have been a major public concern for decades, but legislative attempts to stop them, including the 2003 National Do-Not-Call Registry, have been largely ineffective as robocallers can place thousands of calls in seconds from overseas dialers outside of FCC jurisdiction. The proposal by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and the Robocall Enforcement Improvement Act introduced last week by Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill and Maine Senator Susan Collins would give the FCC greater authority to fine spammers and spoofers, and allow telephone carriers to offer robocall-blocking services to customers.

We believe the best long-term solution for stopping robocalls will involve both tougher legislation and continued technology innovation,” Quilici said.

About the YouMail App

YouMail replaces smartphone visual voicemail with a service that significantly improves its users’ caller care, privacy, and productivity, through innovative features such as visual caller ID, automated caller blocking, personalized smart greetings, automatic replies, cloud storage, multi-platform access to messages, call routing, and more. The app is available on iPhone and Android, in addition to desktop and mobile Web-based platforms. There are also third-party applications tied into the YouMail Platform for Windows Phone, iPhone, and Android.